1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an information processing apparatus, and more particularly, to an apparatus for registering therein and retrieving image information obtained by converting the contents of a document, a drawing or the like into image signals.
2. Description of the Background Art
Conventionally, an electronic filing apparatus is known as one of the information registering and retrieving apparatuses. In the electronic filing apparatus, an original document or plural documents are initially read by a scanner to be converted into image signals under the control of a CPU so that the image signals may be stored therein as primary information. The primary information is then supplemented by secondary information such as a keyword or similar information for retrieving the primary information. The secondary information is inputted into a storage device upon operation of a keyboard or similar input device to be registered and stored therein. On the basis of retrieval conditions of the secondary information to be inputted by the keyboard, the corresponding primary information is retrieved from various information stored in the storage device so that desired primary information may be represented on a display and printed by a printer.
Register processing by the electronic filing apparatus is illustrated in a flow-chart of FIG. 1.
Using a function key provided on the keyboard, a registration mode is set as a processing mode at step m11 followed by step m12 at which the secondary information, corresponding to the primary information to be registered, is inputted using character keys or the like provided on the keyboard. At step m13, an original document is read by the scanner and converted into the image signals, which are inputted as the primary information. It is judged at step m14 whether or not there exists another document to be registered. If there exists another document, the procedure returns to step m13 until all the documents to be registered are entirely inputted as primary information. After the primary information corresponding to the aforementioned secondary information has been completely inputted, the procedure proceeds to step m15 at which time the primary information is supplemented by the secondary information upon depression of a register key provided on the keyboard. Thus, the entire information may be registered and stored in the storage device. Finally, it is judged at step m16 whether or not there exists other primary information to be registered. If there exists other primary information, the procedure returns to step m12 followed by steps m13 to m15 at which time the secondary information, together with the corresponding primary information, is inputted into and registered in the storage device. If it is judged at step m16 that there exists no further primary information to be registered, the procedure ends.
However, in the registration processing with the use of the conventional electronic filing apparatus, whenever each piece of the secondary information is manually inputted by the keyboard, the corresponding primary information is required to be inputted by the scanner. Because of this, an operator must be in constant attendance at the apparatus to input the necessary secondary information until the primary information is entirely registered. Accordingly, the operator is under that restriction, even during the input of the primary information to be performed by the scanner, which does not necessarily require the operator to be present. In addition, a complicated operation requires a lot of time for registration, thus resulting disadvantageously in relatively low working efficiency.
During the retrieval operation of the conventional electronic filing apparatus, a retrieval mode is initially selected upon depression of the function key by the operator. In this event, guidance information, required for a setting retrieval condition or conditions, is represented on the display, as shown in FIG. 2a. The operator inputs, for example, "electronic filing apparatus" as a name of article of commerce into an item "keyword" using a cursor key and the character keys and then depresses a retrieval key. This operation causes the apparatus to initiate the retrieval processing and to represent a table of the secondary information matching the retrieval conditions on the display, as shown in FIG. 2b. This table shows indexes of the primary information containing a test result with respect to the "electronic filing apparatus" of each company. After the operator has inserted a cassette (refer to FIG. 2c) storing therein the test result on the basis of the cassette number in the indexes, he can selectively designate material No. &lt;1&gt; using the cursor key. As a result, the electronic filing apparatus represents the test result of the designated material No. &lt;1&gt;, on the display, as an image with an image quality, as shown in FIG. 2d, and prints it on a record sheet of a printer.
Furthermore, the electronic filing apparatus is provided with a pre-processing function and a next-page processing function. When the table of the secondary information, as shown in FIG. 2b, is being displayed, the pre-processing function can return, upon depression of a "pre-processing" key, the control condition to the retrieval condition setting step, as shown in FIG. 2a, immediately previous to the step of representing the table of the secondary information. Likewise, when the primary information is being displayed as shown in FIG. 2d, the pre-processing function can return the control condition to the step of representing the table of the secondary information as shown in FIG. 2b. On the other hand, in the case where there exist plural pages of the primary information corresponding to a piece of the secondary information, the next-page processing function causes an image of the page next to the image of FIG. 2d to be displayed and printed, upon depression of a "next-page" key.
It is true that the pre-processing and next-page processing functions really facilitate the retrieval operation in the conventional apparatus. However, the material number of the desired primary information is required to be initially designated on the basis of the table of the secondary information retrieved in accordance with the retrieval conditions. The designated primary information is then represented on the display and printed by the printer. The retrieval is executed by repeating the above described processing operations. Accordingly, whenever the display and the printing of the primary information (FIG. 2d), having the designated material number, are brought to completion, the table of the secondary information shown in FIG. 2b appears on the display and the operator is requested to select the next material number on each occasion. This is not so serious in the case where the number of materials to be retrieved are relatively few. However, when a large number of materials are required to be retrieved, the selecting operation becomes bothersome. Particularly, in the case where the operator can guess the contents of the primary information from the table of the secondary information, almost useless primary information is successively displayed alternately with the table of the secondary information. This is disadvantageous in that the retrieval operation can not be efficiently performed.